This rather polemical paper, published in educational Philosophy and Theory in March 1981, was a critical review of the destructive criticisms of schooling and the education system associated with some Marxist philosophers, and in particular Kevin Harris’s book, Education and Knowledge, 1979. It seemed to me, and still seems so, that Harris and others of the same persuasion painted themselves into a corner from which there could be no escape. I wrote in a paragraph near the end, their defeatism concludes with the message, give up, or get out, which means there is no point in educating anyone. I still consider this to be a pernicious doctrine.